Notes on Ernesto Che Guevara's Ideas on Pedagogy

By Lidia Turner Martí, 2014, Fernwood PublishingThe idea that education is the responsibility of all society and backed by government will strike a chord with UK teachers trying to create an education worthy of their students. See review below.

Anyone with an interest in, or experience of the UK education system, will find this a fascinating, and perhaps rather wistful, read. The ideas espoused by Che Guevara in relation to the education of a people will strike a particular chord with the thousands of UK teachers attempting to deliver a meaningful and relevant education in the face of the neo-liberal and pernicious Global Education Reform Movement which is taking education out of the hands of students, educators and their community and handing the reins to global, money-making corporations.

The successes of the Cuban revolution in creating a highly literate and educated people is widely evidenced; this slim volume attempts to steer its development further by analysing the words and deeds of Che Guevara who asserted learning was essential to revolution and progress, and that education was the responsibility of all society.

Many of the key ideas that emerge from his thinking will not be new to educators but what will seem novel is the idea that a government is getting behind them. This is far from the experience of teachers in many countries around the world whose pedagogy is reined in by a narrow curriculum, excessive testing and an obsession with data.

One of Che’s assertions was that “a human being cannot be placed into rigid moulds separating his merits and making a mathematical addition of his qualities to obtain a total, because he is one and unique”. This will chime with UK teachers trying to create an education worthy of their students, in spite of the restraints of a restrictive curriculum taught to the test.

Other ideas will resonate too: the idea of education being a continual and continuous process throughout life; the idea that making mistakes is a necessary part of all learning; the idea that learning from our heroes means being honest about, and analysing, their faults; the idea that learning is a two-way process in which teachers, too, develop their own understanding through dialogue with their students; the idea that all learning should be broad and inter-disciplinary; the idea that dissent and disagreement brings about an honest and deeper knowledge.

At the heart of Che’s pedagogy is another powerful idea: that an individual’s education must be both personal and collective to ensure that all citizens are empowered to develop their own capabilities whilst at the same time using them to improve the society in which they live. Isn’t this an education we would all like to see?